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‘Aag’ hits the screens today, but without all of the immortal lines of ‘Sholay’. We take a look at dialogues that have outlived their films in the recent times – from Mumbaiyya one-liners to Urdu couplets.

Smart talk Stills from &#8216’Aag’

Aag, what Ram Gopal Varma calls as his “interpretation of Sholay,” releases today. When Amitabh Bachchan takes centre stage as Babban Singh, the audience will pitch him against late Amjad Khan’s character of Gabbar.

For many, watching Sholay is a karaoke experience. Having memorised the dialogues (Salim-Javed), the Sholay faithfuls would join Dharmendra in echoing “Kuttey mein tera koon peejaoonga,” or Amjad Khan in “Kitne Aadmi The?” Varma’s Aag, on the other hand, will tear away from the original and according to Varma, will not replicate all of the immortal lines. “My film is a tribute to Sholay and not a remake. Babban is an exotic looking, larger-than-life villain and is as dangerous as Gabbar. But the way he speaks will be different,” reasons Varma.

Don – the chase begins

Keep it short

Munna Bhai MBBS

“Which film’s dialogues have stayed in public memory in the last 15 years?” asks Amitabh Bachchan, talking to Friday Review. If Shah Rukh Khan as Don is widely heard on ringtones and ringback ton
es of mobile phone users declaring “Don ko pakhadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai,” that too cuts back to Amitabh Bachchan’s original Don (dialogues by Salim-Javed again) in 1978. Amitabh reasons t
hat the emphasis on dialogues has changed over the years. “This is the age of fast food; everything has to be precise and concise. If your laptop takes a few minutes to boot, you want to replace the hard disk. There’s no time for redundancy and rhetoric. We have to cater to this generation of youngsters. On the other hand, films in the 50s to the 80s emphasised on the written word,” he says.

The written word still rules, and blends to suit different contexts. Mumbaiyya language saw a revival thanks to Munna Bhai and Arshad Warsi. “Even today, many people on the streets call me ‘maamu.’ Mu
nna Bhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munna Bhai spoke in a language that people could relate to. It’s needless to add that only when the story, the concept and the film succeed, people remember the dialogues,” points out actor
Bomman Irani.

A stark departure from Don, Aag and Munna Bhai are films like Fanaa and Rang De Basanti. An easy blend of Urdu and Hindi hooked the younger lot to Fanaa. An
d Rang De Basanti (dialogues by Prasoon Joshi and Rensi D’Silva) made both ‘masti ki pathshaala’ and ‘Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna’ anthems for many a revolution across colle
ges. “Before RDB, I had planned to make another film on freedom fighters who preferred the sword to the pen. We got groups of youngsters in Delhi and Mumbai and discussed at length about the freedom movement and what they thought of the country. It was clear that they weren’t interested. I understood that I had to juxtapose the old with the new. This reflects in every aspect of the film – from the screen play to the dialogues and lyrics in songs. We needed Sarfaroshi ki tamanna as much as Roobaroo and Masti ki paathshala,” says Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra.

In the film, Su, the Brit youngster, watches in dismay as Siddharth and his friends read lines from her script – Azadi meri dulhan hai – and chuckle “what’s his (Bhagat Singh) problem? Who speaks like this?” Of course, the brat pack undergoes a sea change and get into the spirit of the roles of the freedom fighters. Lines from the Bhagvad Gita echo in the background as the freedom fighters endure their days of torment in prison.

Rang De Basanti

Fanaa, meanwhile, is a throw back to the days of the shayari. Among the many quoted in the film, “Tere dil mein meri saason ko panaah mil jaye, tere ishq mein meri jaan fanaa ho jaye,”
remains the most popular. In Shaan’s voice, Subhanallah also became an anthem.

Lyricist and writer Javed Akhtar explains, “Don and Sholay captured the youngsters with smart one-liners. The other films presented couplets that were easy for the younger lot to understand. Many youngsters
cannot differentiate between Hindi and Urdu. They assume that what they can understand easily is Hindi and what takes them some time to decipher is Urdu. There is no clear boundary between spoken Urdu and Hindi. In many films and songs, what is used is neither pure Hindi nor Urdu. It’s Hindustani.”

And we’ll get to see more of this blend when Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Akbar-Jodha opens later this year with Hrithik and Aishwarya Rai.

‘Aag’ hits the screens today, but without all of the immortal lines of ‘Sholay’. We take a look at dialogues that have outlived their films in the recent times – from Mumbaiyya one-liners to Urdu couplets.

Smart talk Stills from &#8216’Aag’

Aag, what Ram Gopal Varma calls as his “interpretation of Sholay,” releases today. When Amitabh Bachchan takes centre stage as Babban Singh, the audience will pitch him against late Amjad Khan’s character of Gabbar.

For many, watching Sholay is a karaoke experience. Having memorised the dialogues (Salim-Javed), the Sholay faithfuls would join Dharmendra in echoing “Kuttey mein tera koon peejaoonga,” or Amjad Khan in “Kitne Aadmi The?” Varma’s Aag, on the other hand, will tear away from the original and according to Varma, will not replicate all of the immortal lines. “My film is a tribute to Sholay and not a remake. Babban is an exotic looking, larger-than-life villain and is as dangerous as Gabbar. But the way he speaks will be different,” reasons Varma.

Don – the chase begins

Keep it short

Munna Bhai MBBS

“Which film’s dialogues have stayed in public memory in the last 15 years?” asks Amitabh Bachchan, talking to Friday Review. If Shah Rukh Khan as Don is widely heard on ringtones and ringback ton
es of mobile phone users declaring “Don ko pakhadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai,” that too cuts back to Amitabh Bachchan’s original Don (dialogues by Salim-Javed again) in 1978. Amitabh reasons t
hat the emphasis on dialogues has changed over the years. “This is the age of fast food; everything has to be precise and concise. If your laptop takes a few minutes to boot, you want to replace the hard disk. There’s no time for redundancy and rhetoric. We have to cater to this generation of youngsters. On the other hand, films in the 50s to the 80s emphasised on the written word,” he says.

The written word still rules, and blends to suit different contexts. Mumbaiyya language saw a revival thanks to Munna Bhai and Arshad Warsi. “Even today, many people on the streets call me ‘maamu.’ Mu
nna Bhai MBBS and Lage Raho Munna Bhai spoke in a language that people could relate to. It’s needless to add that only when the story, the concept and the film succeed, people remember the dialogues,” points out actor
Bomman Irani.

A stark departure from Don, Aag and Munna Bhai are films like Fanaa and Rang De Basanti. An easy blend of Urdu and Hindi hooked the younger lot to Fanaa. An
d Rang De Basanti (dialogues by Prasoon Joshi and Rensi D’Silva) made both ‘masti ki pathshaala’ and ‘Sarfaroshi ki Tamanna’ anthems for many a revolution across colle
ges. “Before RDB, I had planned to make another film on freedom fighters who preferred the sword to the pen. We got groups of youngsters in Delhi and Mumbai and discussed at length about the freedom movement and what they thought of the country. It was clear that they weren’t interested. I understood that I had to juxtapose the old with the new. This reflects in every aspect of the film – from the screen play to the dialogues and lyrics in songs. We needed Sarfaroshi ki tamanna as much as Roobaroo and Masti ki paathshala,” says Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra.

In the film, Su, the Brit youngster, watches in dismay as Siddharth and his friends read lines from her script – Azadi meri dulhan hai – and chuckle “what’s his (Bhagat Singh) problem? Who speaks like this?” Of course, the brat pack undergoes a sea change and get into the spirit of the roles of the freedom fighters. Lines from the Bhagvad Gita echo in the background as the freedom fighters endure their days of torment in prison.

Rang De Basanti

Fanaa, meanwhile, is a throw back to the days of the shayari. Among the many quoted in the film, “Tere dil mein meri saason ko panaah mil jaye, tere ishq mein meri jaan fanaa ho jaye,”
remains the most popular. In Shaan’s voice, Subhanallah also became an anthem.

Lyricist and writer Javed Akhtar explains, “Don and Sholay captured the youngsters with smart one-liners. The other films presented couplets that were easy for the younger lot to understand. Many youngsters
cannot differentiate between Hindi and Urdu. They assume that what they can understand easily is Hindi and what takes them some time to decipher is Urdu. There is no clear boundary between spoken Urdu and Hindi. In many films and songs, what is used is neither pure Hindi nor Urdu. It’s Hindustani.”

And we’ll get to see more of this blend when Ashutosh Gowarikar’s Akbar-Jodha opens later this year with Hrithik and Aishwarya Rai.

BEIJING – Chinese President Hu Jintao on Thursday sacked his finance minister amid a major political shake-up ahead of the ruling Communist Party’s crucial five-yearly gathering.

Jin Renqing, who oversaw the longest stock boom in Chinese history during his four years in the post, was removed and replaced by Xie Xuren, the head of the nation’s tax bureau, the official Xinhua news agency said.

Four other new ministers were appointed on Thursday — on top of a string of other high-profile changes in recent months — as the political establishment braces for the party’s crucial Congress that opens on October 15.

Hu is widely seen to be reshaping the top echelons of power so that he can consolidate and strengthen his base at the Congress for another five-year term.

“The Congress is like Chinese New Year. You try to clean your house beforehand,” said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political scientist at Hong Kong Baptist University.

Aside from the sacking of Jin, Xinhua said that China’s parliament had also approved new ministers in the state security, personnel and supervision portfolios. The supervision ministry oversees graft within the government.

A new minister was also appointed to take over at the commission that is in charge of China’s space and missile programme.

An official with the information office of the State Council, or Cabinet, said Jin had tendered his resignation for “personal reasons”.

Some press reports suggested that he was involved in a sex scandal, fitting in well with Hu’s desire to be seen as cracking down on corruption and moral problems within the party ahead of the Congress.

Hong Kong’s influential Ming Pao newspaper said Jin was sacked after he introduced a woman to Chen Tonghai, the chairman of oil giant China Petroleum and Chemical Corp (Sinopec), who resigned in June under suspicions of graft.

While not mentioning Jin specifically, Hu said in comments published in the People’s Daily, the party’s mouthpiece, on Thursday that there were ethical and

other problems within the leadership of China’s financial team.

“In the financial system, we must strengthen efforts to ensure clean governance and behaviour becoming of the party,” the paper quoted Hu as telling the politburo on Wednesday.

“We must raise the professional ethics and the ideological and political quality of all financial personnel, especially those in leadership positions.

“We must ensure a new healthy atmosphere, combat unhealthy trends and evil practices, and create an overall benign atmosphere.”

China’s stock market did not see any visible impact from the announcement of Jin’s removal, with the benchmark Shanghai Composite Index closing up 1.14 percent for the day.

This reflected the relatively moderate importance of the finance and other ministers in China’s political system, where real power rests with the politburo’s standing committee, analysts said.

“In terms of economic policy, the key figure is the premier of the Cabinet,” said Zhang Xin, a professor of public administration at Beijing’s Renmin University.

The government official who confirmed Jin’s “resignation”, speaking on condition of anonymity, said he had been appointed vice-director of the State Council’s Development Research Centre, a think tank.

The position of vice-director at the centre is equivalent to the rank of

vice-minister in China’s complex political system.

Xie, 59, was until Thursday head of the State Administration of Taxation, the same position Jin held before taking over at the finance ministry.

Other high-profile politicians who have lost their posts ahead of the Congress include Li Zhaoxing, who was removed as foreign minister in April, and Chen Liangyu, sacked last year as Shanghai party chief for graft. – AFP/ac/ir

SINGAPORE : The Education Ministry receives some 3,000 applications for first time registration as relief teacher each year – and some 100, or 3 per cent, of these are rejected.

Minister of State for Education Lui Tuck Yew gave these figures in Parliament on Monday when he replied to questions brought up by Nominated MPs Eunice Olsen and Siew Kum Hong on the recruitment criteria for relief teachers.

Rear Admiral Lui said it was inappropriate to discuss individual cases of teachers or relief teachers in the House.

However, he said applicants could be rejected because they do not have the requisite educational qualities, do not have a passion for teaching, or perhaps they have unsuitable records or disciplinary history.

He explained : “Teachers are in a unique position of authority and have great influence over the children they teach, engaging hearts and minds and shaping their attitudes and perspectives.

“Whether permanent or relief, teachers are expected to conduct themselves in a manner which befits this role and to uphold the integrity of the profession, both in a personal and professional capacity. The values they hold are also an important consideration as they are role models for our children.” – CNA/ch